


chasing paper, getting nowhere (on our way back home)

by ivermectin



Category: Osmosis (TV 2019)
Genre: & mild spoiler for the end, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Family Feels, Gen, Louise Vanhove's A+ Parenting, POV Paul Vanhove, Spoilers for s1 ep6 (Separation)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-28
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:49:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28385034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivermectin/pseuds/ivermectin
Summary: Esther and Paul against the world, he tells her.
Relationships: Paul Vanhove & Esther Vanhove





	chasing paper, getting nowhere (on our way back home)

**Author's Note:**

> I cannot believe this show doesn't have a fandom online (that I could find, at least.) It's practically a perfect show in my eyes, it's everything I love in media. So I really had to write this, because we've got to start somewhere.
> 
> I do not know French, which is why the title of this is from a Beatles song of all things (I know. I'm sorry.)  
> This deals a lot with Paul's feelings re: his sisters. Like - a LOT. don't say I didn't warn you.

1

 _Esther and Paul against the world_ , he tells her. Like it’s been that way always.

The family photos look calm and placid, a band-aid over a scab but the wound was infected a long time ago.

2

“You’re not my sister,” he told her once.

He’d wanted to grieve; his memory heavy with the recollection of a game he was playing, a level he couldn’t beat, the fact that she’d kicked the ground too hard and the force had sent her toppling, the way she’d hit the water, the blood, their mother in the kitchen pouring out orange juice, unknowing, him, pressing replay, not even looking, not even hearing the splash.

He wants to say, _a girl died, and she isn’t you,_ but the next thing he knows, his mother’s yelling, slapping him fiercely. Holding the girl in her arms, cooing to her, as if she can pretend away a dead daughter, a discreet adoption. Her eyes when they look at Paul are cold and relentless.

Still – Esther, even if she isn’t who their mother wants her to be – lives in their house. Grows up with the same mother Paul does. The mother he’s realising he needs to protect her from.

They’re not related. She isn’t the first Esther.

But she is his sister.

3

Sometimes, he dreams of her, the first Esther, drowning again. He dreams of the living Esther, and the dead Esther. He is not forgiven, not by his sisters, not by his mother, not by himself.

Sometimes, he dreams of their mother. Arranging flowers on a grave, admitting a grief that she wanted to hide away.

If only.

4

Esther is good at science, bubbly and energetic. She’s not – she’s not Esther the first, dead at seven, playing hopscotch around the pool, reading cardboard books about princesses and the comics in the newspaper and playing with rubber ducks in the bathtub – Esther, alive Esther, is all advanced magazines and textbooks instead of the dolls left waiting for her, always trying to fix things, put things back together.

She’s not like Paul – he sits in the wreckage. He’s seen rock bottom, and he’s fucking terrified of it. She’s the solutions. All the solutions. She creates them, she forms them. She’s the fucking band-aid. Esther Vanhove the first is the wound, gaping and bleeding. Paul learns to see himself as the knife.

5

He has two sisters, one who is dead and one who is alive. Esther puts the band on his wrist, tells him they’ll always be connected as the green light swaps over to red. He tickles her, and she shrieks with laughter. There are two Esthers, and there are two Pauls, too. Paul, the brother who let his sister die. And this new Paul, this Paul who evolved in the aftermath. Paul who hates his mother, who his mother despises, too. Paul who loves his sister. Paul, who would never let his sister die.

6

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Paul exhales, holding his cigarette. He knows how it looks, even if he doesn’t know how she feels. He lied to her. He was in on the whole lie. She probably thinks he loved her because he was punished into it, their mother reprimanding him into a forceful and twisted game of pretend. But that’s not the truth. Even if she isn’t the girl who died, she is still his sister. The only other person on the planet as fucked up as he is, even if she doesn’t remember. This is what he was trying to keep her safe from.

“I wanted to protect you,” he says.

7

i.

 _Esther and Paul against the world,_ he thinks in the car on the way to the launch.

All this time he spent protecting her, and then she did this, she took the fall. He’s under no illusions about any of it. Osmosis is all Esther & Paul, but he’s the figurehead, even if she’s the brain behind the whole thing, the science of it, the heart of it.

It was Esther’s turn to protect him, and she hadn’t flinched.

ii.

But then, he’s on stage. And from the audience, Esther emerges, just like that, like nothing’s wrong. They’re being broadcasted on live television, and for once, Paul has been honest, sunk the ship of the company before bailing, as he knew he had to do.

He wraps an arm around Esther, smiles at the crowd. Esther leans against him.

iii.

Whoever else they lost, whichever other Vanhove relatives whose deaths they’re responsible for, he still has her, and she still has him. Two of them, against the world, as always.

The audience applauds.

**Author's Note:**

> why is this show not more popular! ahhhhHHH.


End file.
